In the past week, I have returned from an amazing birthday trip to New Orleans, hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 13 people, and shopped for, wrapped gifts for, and put together 65 Christmas stockings for Marines at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. I think the stockings may have been harder than the dinner, even with help from Jason, Neale and Erin, who saved me from having to wrap everything by myself for the second year in a row. (Thanks, guys!!!)

One of the guys mentioned, when I was asking what they might like in the stockings, that they always loved handknit hats, as long as they weren’t like something their grandmother would give them. He didn’t realize he was talking to a knitter. When all was said and done, we had nearly 50 hats to go in the stockings.

Cheryl and Michelle sent hats from West Virginia and New Mexico.

Tesia sent hats from Seattle, and I just can’t figure out when she had time to knit them.

And, I was able to include some locally made soap along with cloths knit by Abi that I have been saving for exactly this purpose.

Somehow I forgot how, when you tell knitters that you need warm woolies, they will come through in spades.

And, just in case you ever wondered what 65 stockings looks like….well, it looks like this, times about three, and when you carry it to the hospital, it fills two huge shopping bags and two big blue Ikea tarp bags.